▶ 0:16:49>> I don't have my gavel but senator murry said it is a doge code. The senate committee will come to order.
▶ 0:17:15Nih has for long challenges helg nih has for long challenges hels better understand heart disease, preventing and curing certain cancers as examples. It has led to significant accomplishments like mapping the human genome which is the foundation of many medical breakthroughs. As a medical researcher who has engaged in nih sponsored research for decades, Dr. bhattacharya understands the power of these investments.
▶ 0:17:44If your name comes out a little bit different every time I say it, I apologize in advance. Importantly nih grants have increased capacities in states that otherwise would not affect sufficient resources to invest. My state of louisiana has received $509 through nih's idea program allowing institutions to bring lifesaving cures and treatments to people in my state and around the world.
▶ 0:18:15However, nih at times has prioritize funding for risk-averse incremental science. There is concern the current system incentivizes established scientists who study already proven concepts rather than younger scientists who have unproven ideas with potential as major medical breakthroughs. While this practice may sure the short-term success of federal grants, it limits groundbreaking discoveries. I discussed this with you previously and look forward to hearing more today.
▶ 0:18:44Nih is facing other serious challenges. During the covid pandemic there was a loss of trust in public health and scientific institutions. To restore that trust, officials need to be more transparent and provide reassurance that they are publishing health guidance that is best for americans health and not biased. You have indicated you would like to promote a free and open debate at nih including scientists who disagree and this is encouraging. Nih is at an inflection point.
▶ 0:19:17If confirmed, you will be tasked with leading an agency that desperately needs a reform. We released several proposals outlining ways to modernize nih, improving operations to better serve the american taxpayer. I look forward to hearing your vision of working with you on these proposals if you are confirmed. With that, I recognize senator sanders for his opening statement. Several
▶ 0:19:42Seve. Sanders: Thank you. Today we will be considering Dr. jayanta bhattacharya to be the director of the nih. The nih is the largest funder of medical research in the world. This research has led to new treatments of prescription drugs that have significantly improved the lives of americans and people throughout the world. I think all of us should be very proud of those accomplishments.
▶ 0:20:12Seve. Sanders: Having said that, let me say a few words about my concerns. I don't have to tell any american that the healthcare system is our country -- in our country is broken and failing. He spent almost twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other industrialized nation yet we have 85 million people who are uninsured or underinsured. We don't have enough doctors, nurses, mental health specialists.
▶ 0:20:41Seve. Sanders: Not only is our life expectancy four years lower than other wealthy countries, the bottom 50% in this country live on average seven years shorter lives than the top 1%. In other words, being working-class low income in america is in many ways a death sentence. If you are rich, you live long. Working-class, seven years.
▶ 0:21:06Seve. Sanders: Very relevant to the hearing that we are conducting right now , we pay as I think every american knows the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. No great secret there. In some cases we pay more than 10,000 -- more than 10 times what our friends in canada and europe pay.
▶ 0:21:26Seve. Sanders: Not only has the federal government not effectively related the price of prescription drugs but the taxpayers in our country have over the years declined -- in numbers benefits, benefits to some of the most profitable pharmaceutical companies in the world.
▶ 0:21:53Seve. Sanders: In 2023 when I had the privilege of chairing the committee, this committee released report that found that the average price of new treatments at -- that nih scientists helped invent, $111,000.
▶ 0:22:15Seve. Sanders: In virtually all cases american taxpayers are paying far more than people in other countries for the exact same medicine that the nih and taxpayers help develop. We developed the drug and then we pay 10 times more than other countries for the drug that are taxpayers help develop.
▶ 0:22:35Seve. Sanders: For example, visor charged americans with prostate cancer over $179,000 for expanding while the exact same drug can be purchased in japan for just $18,000. We do the research and pay for taxpayers of the weekend ripped off by the companies.
▶ 0:22:55Seve. Sanders: In my view we need an nih director who is prepared to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and use every tool at his or her disposal to substantially lower the price of prescription drugs. Not a new issue. An issue that people in this committee have been talking about for decades. With all due respect Dr. bhattacharya, president trump will not be giving you that authority.
▶ 0:23:23Seve. Sanders: I don't know what your views are. That authority will rest with elon musk. Over the past several weeks it has become clear that it does not matter who the president nominates to be director of the nih. And I do not mean to be disrespectful in saying that. It does not matter who he nominates to be director of the nih or the secretary of labor, the secretary of education or commissioner of the food and drug administration. The real person in charge of all these federal agencies is Mr.
▶ 0:23:54Seve. Sanders: Elon musk and that will continue to be the case no matter who the senate confirms to these positions. It is my understanding that Mr. musk and his minions at doge have moved to terminate some 1200 employees at the nih already, 6% of the staff. Doge played a major role in freezing nearly all grant money at nih including grants that can lead to a potential cure for cancer, alzheimer's and many other life writing diseases.
▶ 0:24:28Seve. Sanders: The bottom line is that in my view the real gentleman we should be having up here, no disrespect, is elon musk. Mr. chairman and I would hope very much and I think the american people would be very grateful if we could bring the real leader of the nih, the department of education and many other agencies of government for us and that is Mr. musk. I will be looking forward to working with you to see if we can schedule a hearing with Mr.
▶ 0:24:59Seve. Sanders: Musk. Thank you.
▶ 0:25:00Chair Cassidy: Before we turn to the nominee for his own opening statement, Dr. bhattacharya will be introduced by senator ricketts who will make clear the connection between you and nebraska, which I am not sure what it is. Senator ricketts. Several se';Sen. ricketts: it is an honor to represent to you Dr. bhattacharya to be the president's nominee for the national institutes of health.
▶ 0:25:30Chair Cassidy: I had the opportunity to meet Dr. bhattacharya during the covid pandemic. A little bit about myself, I was governor of nebraska at the time. In a prior life I was a college major undergrad and working in a biochemistry lab. I'm actually published. For a brief moment in time I was involved in the research world that the nih grants to support. During the pandemic we did not know a lot. There was no playbook.
▶ 0:25:59Chair Cassidy: I was getting great advice from our folks at the university of nebraska knuckle center but I also reached out to talk to other folks like Dr. bhattacharya about how we should handle this pandemic. One of the things about Dr. bhattacharya's he showed great intellectual honesty and courage because he offered alternative suggestions about how to handle a pandemic.
▶ 0:26:23Chair Cassidy: We know now that young people are not really impacted by the covid virus as much as older people are cared typically in the past what we had done is we had a policy of let's protect the vulnerable people and other people can go about their lives. We turned that on its head for the pandemic because we really did not know what was going on. Dr.
▶ 0:26:43Chair Cassidy: Bhattacharya helped give me a perspective and demonstrated that he was thinking not just about how does the virus impact people but if we do lockdowns and so forth, how will that impact people's health. And there were other impacts from doing those shutdowns. For example we saw many school districts across the country shut down and certainly in nebraska as well. In march and april we made those recommendations as well.
▶ 0:27:12Chair Cassidy: In july, I stood with my director of education to say that we expect kids to be in classrooms in august. That was important because kids need to be in classrooms. We found out that one of the downsides of the pandemic is that kids do better in the classrooms with other kids. One of the results of that according to the 2020 report card, nebraska scored highest in fourth grade math and test scores in eighth grade math was second overall. Our kids were back in the classroom.
▶ 0:27:42Chair Cassidy: I saw states like california where they were not in the classroom and I worry about the damage done to those kids education by not being in the classroom. Dr. bhattacharya helped us think about broadly how we will look at everybody self, not just the virus but mental health, education. In fact, politico ranked all 50 states on things like health outcomes, education, the economy and social well-being.
▶ 0:28:12Chair Cassidy: Nebraska ranked number one overall. Politico ranked as the number one best pandemic response state. >> was this while you were governor?
▶ 0:28:24Sen. Ricketts: This was while I was governor. If another guy had been governor, I would have bragged about him too. But this was when I was governor. Dr. bhattacharya has been published in 135 peer-reviewed publications on a variety of topics from law, medicine, the economy. Having a broader perspective really helped us frame a pandemic response in nebraska that helped us be very successful. Outside sources like politico recognize that.
▶ 0:28:54Sen. Ricketts: I think what you will get from Dr. bhattacharya is somebody who understands the scientific method, that it is not all about we all agree on this. It is about we published a research paper that is out there to be replicated. Others are supposed to replicate to see if they get the same results. If they don't, that's ok. I read a lot of research papers and a lot of them did not agree to it that is what science is about. It is not supposed to be about groupthink and that is the established way it is.
▶ 0:29:24Sen. Ricketts: It is about challenging ideas and about thinking, you've got this idea. Prove it. You have done this experience. I will replicate. See if it comes out the way you said it would. That is how research is supposed to work. This is what Dr. bhattacharya demonstrated during the pandemic, that he had the courage to stand up and say wait a second. I know this is the established way of thinking but I think there is an alternative way to look at it.
▶ 0:29:50Sen. Ricketts: Because he did that, because he had that courage, I can tell you specifically in nebraska we benefited and are schoolkids benefited by being in the classrooms. Our state benefited in a number of areas whether it was health, social well-being, economy, education. We benefited. I highly recommend Dr. bhattacharya. I think he has great -- I think he is great. He gets how the program works.
▶ 0:30:16Sen. Ricketts: He will be a great person to make sure we are distributing the grants with transparency, accountability and accomplishing what we want to accomplish which is that basic research which is why we have the health system we do in this country today. With that, Mr. chairman, thank you.
▶ 0:30:31Chair Cassidy: Thank you, senator ricketts. Dr. bhattacharya, would you like to give an opening statement?
▶ 0:30:41Dr. Bhattacharya: Thank you. Chairman cassidy, members of the senate health committee, I am honored to speak with you today and deeply honored by president trump nomination. I am delighted to have with me my wife, cathy, my son, matthew and my brother. My two other adult children could not attend today but are here with me in spirit. The nih has played a pivotal role in my career.
▶ 0:31:11Dr. Bhattacharya: I served for a decade as a standing member of nih grant committees. I helped train many trainees prepare for scientific careers with nih support. I want funding to study population aging for disease and obesity. I made the study of scientific institutions including the nih itself to focus on my own scientific work. The nih is the crown jewel of american by medical science is, the long and illustrious history of supporting breakthroughs in biology and medicine.
▶ 0:31:41Dr. Bhattacharya: I have the utmost respect for the nih scientists and staff over the decades who have contributed to the success. The mission is to support scientific discovery to enhance health and length of life is vital to our country's future and indeed the world's. I love the nih. The post-pandemic, american biomedical sciences are at a crossroads.
▶ 0:32:08Dr. Bhattacharya: In november 2024 a study reported that only 66% of americans had a great deal of confidence in the scientists to act in the public's best interest. 23% have not much or no confidence at all. How can I help the nih better achieve its mission? I have five concrete goals if confirmed as director. First, nih research should focus on research that solves the american chronic disease crisis. American health is going backwards.
▶ 0:32:39Dr. Bhattacharya: Life expectancy flatlined between 2012 and 2019, plummeted during the pandemic and still has not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. The chronic disease crisis is severe with hundreds of millions of americans, children and adults suffering from obesity, heart disease, cancer and more.
▶ 0:32:59Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, I will carry our president trump and secretary kenedy's agenda of committing the nih to address the chronic health needs of the country with gold standard science and innovation. Second, nih supported science should be replicable, reproducible and generalizable. Unfortunately, much modern biomedical science fails this test.
▶ 0:33:22Dr. Bhattacharya: The nih itself just last year faced a recent integrity scandal involving research on alzheimer's disease that throws into question hundreds of research papers. If the data generated by scientists is not reliable, the products of such science cannot help anyone. It is no stretch to think that the slow progress of all timers disease is linked to this problem.
▶ 0:33:44Dr. Bhattacharya: The nih can and must solve the crisis of scientific data reliability and if I'm confirmed, it will do so. Third, if confirmed, I will establish a culture of respect and free speech at the nih. Over the last two years top nih officials oversaw a culture of cover up, obfuscation and a lack of tolerance for ideas that differ from theirs. Dissent is the very essence of science.
▶ 0:34:15Dr. Bhattacharya: I will foster a culture where nih leadership will actively encourage different perspectives and create an environment where scientists including early career scientists and those who disagree with me can express disagreement respectfully. Fourth, the nih must recommit to its mission to fund the most innovative research agenda possible.
▶ 0:34:39Dr. Bhattacharya: My plan is to ensure that the nih invests in cutting-edge research in every field to make a advantage -- big advances rather than small progress over the years. Fifth, the nih must embrace and vigorously regulate research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. Most regulate risking research that has the possibility of causing a pandemic. We must embrace transparency of all of these operations.
▶ 0:35:09Dr. Bhattacharya: The vast majority of biomedical research poses no harm to the public, the nih must ensure that it never supports work that might cause harm. If confirmed, I will work with congress to guarantee that happens. While I believe there are real problems to be addressed, I want to finish it by reiterating my great respect for the work and mission of the nih.
▶ 0:35:30Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, I will carry out president trump's agenda by making public science institutions of this country worthy of trust and serve to make america healthy again. Thank you.
▶ 0:35:43Chair Cassidy: Thank you. I will start with questions. One thing that has been a real topic has been the issue of measles vaccines and autism. We can see that the false article in "the lancet" decades ago has led to a lot of people not getting their child vaccinated. There is a child who died from a preventable disease in texas.
▶ 0:36:14Chair Cassidy: I will repeat that. A child died from a preventable disease in texas. The secretary put out an editorial which is if you just read it, you should get vaccinated. I have been told that you have said we need to invest nih resources at looking at a possible link between measles vaccines and autism. I have not heard that directly. It is hearsay. Any comment on that?
▶ 0:36:38Dr. Bhattacharya: It is a tragedy that a child with die from a vaccine political disease -- a vaccine preventable disease. I support children being vaccinated for diseases that can be prevented. As far as research on autism and vaccines, I do not generally believe there is a link. Based on my reading of the literature.
▶ 0:37:04Dr. Bhattacharya: What I have seen his tremendous distrust in medicine and science coming out of the pandemic and we do have a sharp rise in autism rates in this country. I don't think any scientist knows the cause of it. I would support a broad scientific agenda based on data to get an answer to that.
▶ 0:37:27Chair Cassidy: This has been exhaustively studied. There are limited resources. If we keep plowing over ground that has been plowed over knowing we can never prove a negative and since we do not know the cause, we still have a problem. We have a responsibility with limited resources. How do we address those things that we do not know the calls for that can ameliorate those things related to those crisis of chronic disease?
▶ 0:37:58Chair Cassidy: My state is terribly affected by chronic disease. I am totally with you. I want to make sure there is appropriate use. Again, going back to -- do you have an idea or agenda that would once more prove that measles vaccines are not associated with autism, neither the schedule of the vaccine or anything else associated with it. My concern is the more we pretend that this is an issue, the more we will have children dying from vaccine preventable disease.
▶ 0:38:25Dr. Bhattacharya: I do a negati. That is impossible really. I want to address the rise in autism.
▶ 0:38:35Chair Cassidy: I accept that. That is laudable. We need to do that. I am asking the specific question. We once more have to go back over this particular issue? Because that has been exhaustively studied.
▶ 0:38:48Dr. Bhattacharya: As I said, I don't think there is a link between the mmr vaccine and autism. I am convinced based on that literature. The only reason I am not wholeheartedly saying yes to your question, is that there are people who might disagree with me.
▶ 0:39:07Chair Cassidy: But that is life. There are people who disagree that the world is round. I say that not to minimize these concerns. People still think elvis is alive. If you just say something disagrees with me, there for I will put precious limited taxpayer dollars to this and not to address the issues of obesity, heart disease and cancer, we have lost. There is an opportunity cost there. You are the economist.
▶ 0:39:37Chair Cassidy: What am I doing talking about opportunity cost? I am pressing you on this because there is a framework. Just because someone is upset about something, do we have the opportunity cost to devote resources to something that has already been pretty well examined?
▶ 0:39:49Dr. Bhattacharya: You are absolutely right. We don't need to address every idea or concern. But if those concerns result in parents not wanting to vaccinate their children with a vaccine that is well tested, my sense is that, my inclination is to give people good data. That's how you address those concerns.
▶ 0:40:10Chair Cassidy: I am not quite sure at what input we say we have good data.
▶ 0:40:16Dr. Bhattacharya: I am concerned -- convinced we have good data on mmr and autism. If other people do not agree and they do not vaccinate their children, if confirmed, one lever I will have is to give them data.
▶ 0:40:32Chair Cassidy: But that good data already exists. You are a scientist. It seems more of an endorsement with an appropriate allocation of current dollars would be a better way to spend precious limited federal dollars.
▶ 0:40:45Dr. Bhattacharya: The most important childhood health problems have to do with childhood diabetes, childhood obesity --
▶ 0:40:53Chair Cassidy: We should be studying that.
▶ 0:40:55Dr. Bhattacharya: That is the vast majority of the effort should go. Prevention of childhood diseases. I think we agree, all those would be the main priorities. Those are the prayers I would have a director.
▶ 0:41:09Chair Cassidy: Tha you. Senator sanders.
▶ 0:41:13Sen. Sanders: Thank you. Dr. bhattacharya as I mentioned a moment ago in some cases we pay 10 times more for prescription drugs for the same drug that other people in other countries pay, something like one out of four americans cannot afford the prescriptions that their doctors write when they get sick. Why do we pay the highest prices of the world by far for prescription drugs and what will you do if you are confirmed as nih director?
▶ 0:41:42Dr. Bhattacharya: I don't have a full answer but I agree with your concern and the fact that we do pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. If I am nih director, if confirmed, there is a very specific things that we have not done that we should do. The nih should fund research on off-patent, off-label use of inexpensive drugs. I will give you an example from the pandemic.
▶ 0:42:12Dr. Bhattacharya: There was a tremendous achievement. There was a study done in the united kingdom, a cheap steroid called dexamethasone, very early in the pen to make.
▶ 0:42:24Sen. Sanders: I apologize but I do not have a lot of time. I hear what you are saying. I am not in disagreement with that. The question is historically the nih has spent billions of dollars in developing important drugs. Yet, despite that taxpayer expenditure, we end up paying far more than other countries.
▶ 0:42:49Sen. Sanders: Should a company that benefits from the taxpayer dollar research at the nih be able to charge any price that they want or should we attach to those contracts a reasonable pricing clause that says, if we help develop this drug and it is effective, you will have to charge a reasonable price for it?
▶ 0:43:09Dr. Bhattacharya: That is an issue where I think previous directors have said it is very difficult for them to nih director alone to take action. That is something that congress and the administration have to work together.
▶ 0:43:22Sen. Sanders: What we are learning for the president is a lot can be done through executive orders. I would disagree with you. That is something that the nih can do. Would you be open to that idea?
▶ 0:43:34Dr. Bhattacharya: I would focus on the future. Imagine the nih focus is on the support for relatively inexpensive.
▶ 0:43:42Sen. Sanders: I am hearing no. Let me ask you this. We talked about life expectancy. Very important issue. Why is it the working class people in america live seven years shorter life than the rich?
▶ 0:43:56Dr. Bhattacharya: It is a chronic disease crisis.
▶ 0:43:59Sen. Sanders: Why does someone who is working class end up with more chronic disease than someone who was wealthy?
▶ 0:44:04Dr. Bhattacharya: That is something that I have devoted my career trying to understand. I think it is a tragedy that there is such a dispersion in life expectancy based on income. The solution that an nih director is to address the health problems that lead to that outcome. The rise in obesity, diabetes --
▶ 0:44:30Sen. Sanders: I apologize for interrupting. What role does the food industry out there that sells a lot of crop to our children. They spend trillions of dollars on advertising products that are not healthy. What will you do about that?
▶ 0:44:49Dr. Bhattacharya: Excellent research to try to find alternatives to a clear the link between -- to make clear the link between the junk food that kids eat and subsequent health outcomes can convince parents to make better choices for the kids, to help them make better choices for their kids. I think the role of research is to elucidate those connections and give people tools.
▶ 0:45:10Sen. Sanders: You are going to have if confirmed, a bully pulpit, so to speak. Would you support what a number of countries around the world are doing in saying to the food industry they cannot do tv advertising for unhealthy foods?
▶ 0:45:26Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, I would absolutely advocate to give parents the tools they need so that their kids --
▶ 0:45:34Sen. Sanders: Sounds like a good politician here. There are tv ads as we speak right now telling kids to tell their mothers that they desperately need some food which is really unhealthy. There are countries who say that those ads should not be allowed on television targeting kids. Would you support those of us who agree with that?
▶ 0:45:55Dr. Bhattacharya: If there is a movement to encourage advertisers to not push unhealthy foods, I certainly would be willing --
▶ 0:46:02Sen. Sanders: You could lead that movement. Will you help lead that movement?
▶ 0:46:08Dr. Bhattacharya: Absolutely. We will make america healthy again. I don't know how one would lead such a movement but I will work with you to do that.
▶ 0:46:16Sen. Sanders: Thank you very much.
▶ 0:46:17Chair Cassidy: Senator paul.
▶ 0:46:21Sen. Paul: Senator sanders, I am glad to see you are interested in junk food. Probably you could transform health more in our country by one policy change and that would be removing junk food, sugar, drinks, drinks, twinkies, from food stands. We have an epidemic of obesity particularly among the poor and those on food stamps. Why not just take the food formulary and make it healthy food?
▶ 0:46:50Sen. Paul: We do this for wic and for pregnant women. I have had a bill out there for quite some time. I have had no one from the side of the aisle. I'm glad to hear your concern for junk food and hope I can get you to consider that. We talked about precious resources. We cannot study autism and the link and we are done with vaccines. The problem with that is there is a great deal of vaccine hesitancy and there does need to be convincing.
▶ 0:47:18Sen. Paul: It does not need to be 99% of the nih budget but certainly there is room to have another study to try to convince those who are hesitant. We had a look at politicians who say no vaccines like the amish and others and try to compare them in a scientific way to try to learn something from that. One way to have more precious resources is to get rid of the frivolous studies. William proxmire started talking about this in the 1970's.
▶ 0:47:47Sen. Paul: I have been talking about this in the years. This is from the nih. If someone in front of you sneezes on the food in the cafeteria, are you more or less likely to take the food? That kind of stuff is ridiculous. You could have real science if you were not doing that. But that has been going on for decades. One of the first things that william proxmire mentioned was a study on what makes people happy. That would be great for cosmopolitan magazine.
▶ 0:48:18Sen. Paul: It was stupid for a study. That was 30 years ago. One of the ones he hated the worst was what makes people more aggressive, the gym aggressive, the gyin or tequila. We all know it has to be tequila. We don't need to study that. There are lots of frivolous things out there that give good science a bad name. I vote for almost no spending. I voted for money for the nih. But they have to do a better job.
▶ 0:48:47Sen. Paul: I hope you will direct it toward diabetes, heart disease, cancer, alzheimer's, these big diseases. We have to change the way the grants are so that someone on the grant committee may be should be from every behavioral study to make sure we are not wasting it on whether rats use more cocaine than well-liked rats. That was from last year.
▶ 0:49:15Sen. Paul: What do you think about trying to look at the way we do grants to populate the people on the grants. You said you were on the grant committee to try to populate the grant committee where there is attention being paid to the big five diseases, so we don't get lost down a rat hole so to speak. Any thoughts on that?
▶ 0:49:33Dr. Bhattacharya: I think the resources that the taxpayers give the nih are precious. If confirmed, I commit to changing the grant committee makeup so that they focus on the most important questions that impact american health. There used to be a mix of basic science work. I can understand how somewhat abstract sites can have advances.
▶ 0:50:00Dr. Bhattacharya: At the same time the research should really be focused on making america healthy. That is the commission of the nih.
▶ 0:50:06Sen. Paul: You mentioned steroids but this was a pretty amazing thing during covid. Steroids have been around forever. They have found that a 36% reduction in covid deaths from people entering the eye see you that are going on the ventilator. There was a huge death rate. They found something that was a cure. When Dr.
▶ 0:50:30Sen. Paul: Fauci came to this committee in march of 2020 I asked him about using high dose steroids the way they do for fasciitis and other infections and he said they do not work. He was adamant that they did not work and it turned out to be the best and the cheapest cure. The knowledge did not get out there because there was a bias. Do you think we can change that kind of bias for open debate and that would make a difference with disease?
▶ 0:51:00Dr. Bhattacharya: Absolutely. That was such a single success over the pandemic. The shame is that there was a group of the u.k. Who ran that study, not the nih. That is something the nih should have run. With billions of dollars for infectious disease, it is something that is changeable with prioritization alone. We can align the nih so that it looks for those kinds of opportunities because there are many of them out there.
▶ 0:51:29Chair Cassidy: Senator murry.
▶ 0:51:33Sen. Murray: Thank you. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that right now president trump and elon musk are putting a lot of life-saving research at risk. We have had grant phrases, pauses on advisory meetings and clinical trials, mass firings being carried out by doge.
▶ 0:51:56Sen. Murray: It is threatening our ability to treat childhood cancer, to mitigate the effects of alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia and to better understand and treat women's health issues. Do you support the recent researcher firings will be grant phrases that have been implemented by trump and doge?
▶ 0:52:15Dr. Bhattacharya: I was not involved in those decisions. I will fully commit to making sure that all the scientists at the nih and the ones that the nih have the resources they need to meet the mission of the nih which is to do research to make america healthy.
▶ 0:52:31Sen. Murray: Do you support further cuts at nih funding or staff?
▶ 0:52:36Dr. Bhattacharya: I do not support -- I don't have any intention to cut anyone at the nih. If confirmed, --
▶ 0:52:45Sen. Murray: The grant freezes and the pauses on all of the committee meetings and pauses an effect on clinical trials happening right now?
▶ 0:52:58Dr. Bhattacharya: I read the press accounts of it. It is hard to know without interacting within the agency.
▶ 0:53:05Sen. Murray: If confirmed,, what will you do about that?
▶ 0:53:09Dr. Bhattacharya: I will assess it day one. I will understand what research is -- what resources the nih needs and make sure the scientists have the resources to do the life-saving work that they do and that the scientists that are supported by the nih also have that. The personal decisions are hard to talk about unless I am confirmed and have more data.
▶ 0:53:31Sen. Murray: I will tell you, I am deeply concerned about the funding and the research that has been stopped and all that is going on. I want a strong assurance that you will get that moving again on day one.
▶ 0:53:44Dr. Bhattacharya: Absolutely I will be looking very carefully at the personnel decisions. I want the nih to be staffed appropriately to meet the mission of the nih. I'm happy to work with you and other members of congress to make sure that happens.
▶ 0:53:57Sen. Murray: Just a few weeks ago trump administration announced an illegal plan to cap in cost rates at 50%, amounting to a massive funding cut for institutions. It brings a lot of life-saving research to a screeching halt. Sick kids would not get the treatment. Clinical trials shut down. I want to ask you, do you know what the indirect cost rate was for stanford last year?
▶ 0:54:26Dr. Bhattacharya: I think it is 55%.
▶ 0:54:28Sen. Murray: That is correct. If the 15% cap was implemented, stanford would lose $160 million per year. What do you say to your colleagues today at stanford, scientists across the country? What do you say to the folks at stanford who know about this?
▶ 0:54:47Dr. Bhattacharya: I have been a researcher at stanford. I have earned nih grant while I have been a professor at stanford. The money that comes to me, the direct cost as researchers, I understand where that money goes. The indirect costs are a 55% tip on top of that --
▶ 0:55:07Sen. Murray: You would tell stanford researchers they do not need that or that stanford is different than everybody else?
▶ 0:55:13Dr. Bhattacharya: Please let me finish. What I mean is I don't know where that goes. A lot of it like a ghost things that are worthwhile and I have heard lots of folks at stanford who would say that and I agree with them. Support for buildings, lightbulbs, to make sure we can see in the lab. A whole host of other important things. There is a lot of distrust about where the money goes because trust has collapsed in the pandemic.
▶ 0:55:41Dr. Bhattacharya: I think transparency regarding indirect costs is absolutely worthwhile. It is something the university can fix our working together to make sure that where that money goes is made clear. I want to make sure that the money goes to the research. I want the money, if it goes to things that are not research and labeled indirect costs --
▶ 0:56:01Sen. Murray: I have a few minutes left. I wanted to ask you if you look at the research going to the advisory committee on day one?
▶ 0:56:12Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, I want those advisory council's.
▶ 0:56:15Sen. Murray: We should all recognize that nih is the largest research medical researcher in the world. It is a global leader. We should be proud of what they do. Nearly one third of all the nobel prize's have been awarded to scientists at nih and supported by nih funds. We need to be very careful moving forward. I've extremely concerned by the dramatic cuts and firings and stopping of the research that is going on.
▶ 0:56:46Sen. Murray: Simple
▶ 0:56:50Simen. Collins: Thank you. Dr., I enjoyed our discussion in my office. I will follow up on senator murry's question about indirect costs.
▶ 0:57:04Simen. Collins: As I indicated to you, I am strongly opposed to the administration's ill-conceived and completely arbitrary proposal to impose a 15% cap on nih grants.
▶ 0:57:24Simen. Collins: Research labs and universities across the state of maine have contacted me to describe the devastating impact that this cap would have on life-saving and life enhancing biomedical research, on ongoing clinical trials and on research related jobs in maine.
▶ 0:57:48Simen. Collins: In 2023 nih supported 1,470 jobs in this field in the state of maine alone. I think it is important that we all acknowledge that a one-size-fits-all approach makes absolutely no sense.
▶ 0:58:08Simen. Collins: That is why nih negotiates with the individual grant recipient what the indirect cost cap should be. It is legitimate to say that we should take another look at that. Are we doing the right amount for stanford versus jackson laboratories at the university of maine? Those are legitimate questions.
▶ 0:58:38Simen. Collins: But to impose this arbitrary cap makes no sense at all. Furthermore, and I really want to stress this. This is against the law. Since 2017, we have had language in the labor hhs appropriations bill that specifically prohibits the indirect cost formula from being changed.
▶ 0:59:08Simen. Collins: And yet, that is what has been done without congressional intent or agreement or consent. And the language has been carried every single year, including in the continuing resolution that we are now operating under. I am not surprised that a judge has stated the order -- stayed the order.
▶ 0:59:36Simen. Collins: If confirmed, will you work immediately to rectify and reverse course on having a one-size-fits-all 15% cap on indirect costs?
▶ 0:59:47Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, I absolutely commit to following the law to addressing this with you very directly. This is one of these issues, to me, it is an indicator of distrust that some half of universities and the scientific process. I want to make sure we address those concerns as well.
▶ 1:00:10Dr. Bhattacharya: I commit to following the law and I will consult with agency counsel immediately and work with you as we spoke of in our meeting to make sure that your concerns are addressed as well.
▶ 1:00:22Sen. Collins: Thank you. You testified that nih should focus on research involving chronic diseases. I agree that we should do a lot more in this area. Half of all american families report having alzheimer's disease in their family. And they are suffering from this progressive and ultimately fatal disease. It is tragic.
▶ 1:00:51Sen. Collins: But the impact is not just humanitarian. It also has a huge financial impact on our nation and that cost burden is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2050. For more than 12 years congress has supported a national strategic plan to look at ways for research to come up with a means of prevention, effective treatments and ultimately a cure .
▶ 1:01:21Sen. Collins: I co-authored the original napa act and the reauthorization through 2035. If confirmed, will you continue to support the national strategic plan targeting alzheimer's?
▶ 1:01:47Dr. Bhattacharya: Absolutely. It is not just a theoretical issue. I have studied it in my research work. I believe very fundamentally that there are very promising potential ways to prevent alzheimer's that have not received the support including from some colleagues of mine at stanford university because they have not aligned with a single dominant narrative about what causes alzheimer's.
▶ 1:02:16Dr. Bhattacharya: I want to expand the set of things that we look at as a possible cause for alzheimer's so that we can make advances. We should have much more advances for the investments we have made to date. I want to make sure that all of the hypotheses out there get addressed. It is a vitally important problem, not just for health but also for the physical health of our country.
▶ 1:02:38Sen. Collins: Thank you. I will submit questions for the record.
▶ 1:02:42Chair Cassidy: Senator baldwin.
▶ 1:02:45Sen. Baldwin: Thank you. I want to begin by discussing the trump administration's actions to halt thousands of nih grants and billions of dollars in research funding. Canceled study sections and advisory council meetings mean that nih cannot award grants to fund critical medical research.
▶ 1:03:13Sen. Baldwin: Additionally the administration attempted to illegally cap indirect costs. You have already got several questions about that. The indirect cost rates -- and this is a blatant defiance of appropriations law which prohibits nih from capping these costs. I am the ranking member of the labor hhs appropriations subcommittee. And I have been raising the alarm about this for weeks now.
▶ 1:03:43Sen. Baldwin: On monday I revealed that the trump administration has halted $65 million in funding for alzheimer's disease, stopping 14 alzheimer's disease research centers from finding ways to treat and prevent this devastating disease. If nih does not reverse course on these really disastrous decisions, the centers will run out of funding at the end of april.
▶ 1:04:13Sen. Baldwin: Dr. bhattacharya, do you agree with president trump that nih should stop funding for research on cancer and alzheimer's disease?
▶ 1:04:24Dr. Bhattacharya: I don't believe president trump has that as his priority.
▶ 1:04:30Sen. Baldwin: His actions in pushing that right now.
▶ 1:04:34Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, I will follow the law on the indirect cost recovery and my commitment is to make sure that every single researcher at the nih, every single researcher supported by nih money has the resources they need.
▶ 1:04:50Sen. Baldwin: We will talk more about the researchers who have been fired. Right now this administration has halted funding for 14 alzheimer's disease research centers. Do you agree with that decision?
▶ 1:05:07Dr. Bhattacharya: I do not have access to that information. If confirmed, I will look into it.
▶ 1:05:14Sen. Baldwin: I know you are not consulting with people at nih pending your confirmation proceedings here. But you are not unaware that this is happening. You should have a position on this. You have accepted president trump's nomination and you are watching these actions taking place in an organization that you may someday lead.
▶ 1:05:41Sen. Baldwin: Do you agree with the stripping away of funding for cancer and alzheimer's disease?
▶ 1:05:47Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, I will make sure that the nih researchers and researchers funded by the nih have the resources they need to make sure they do their research. It is the mission of the nih. If confirmed, my job will be to make sure the mission is met.
▶ 1:06:05Sen. Baldwin: Moving on, I am concerned about how the administration's recent actions are putting early-stage researchers at risk. We talked about that when we visited in my office. In 2016 I worked with senator collins to enact the next generation researchers act. Since then nih has increased funding for early-stage investigators.
▶ 1:06:32Sen. Baldwin: But now these researchers are being targeted by the trump administration and elon musk and his unelected unaccountable capacity. Due to the nih funding trees, university admissions for graduate students have slowed or even stopped. Postdoctoral fellows cannot find jobs to launch their research careers.
▶ 1:06:56Sen. Baldwin: President trump will elon musk have fired nearly 1200 nih employees so far including hundreds of scientists conducting life-saving research. They put the rest of them on notice that more reductions are coming and new restrictions from trump and elon musk could push out about 3000 of the most promising early career researchers by refusing to renew their positions.
▶ 1:07:26Sen. Baldwin: This is the institute that you may be running. These actions threaten an entire generation of scientists. They threaten our future as a global leader in biomedical research. They threaten our future of health and our ability to fight diseases. Frankly, they threaten our national security. Dr. bhattacharya, you have said that as nih director you want to increase support for the next generation of scientists.
▶ 1:07:55Sen. Baldwin: How will you repair the damage and support early career researchers?
▶ 1:08:01Chair Cassidy: Could you please answer quickly?
▶ 1:08:03Dr. Bhattacharya: I am very committed to making sure early career researchers have the resources. It is not just for their own sake but also because they have ideas that are at the cutting edge.
▶ 1:08:14Sen. Baldwin: So he will hire them back?
▶ 1:08:17Dr. Bhattacharya: I was not involved in any of the personnel decisions. If I look very carefully at the decisions --
▶ 1:08:24Chair Cassidy: Thank you. For the record, funding has not been canceled. The meeting to allocate the funding has been delayed. Just for the record. Senator marshall.
▶ 1:08:35Sen. Marshall: Thank you. As I listen to the conversation, we should all doubt our own infallibility and we should doubt the infallibility of the nih as well. I am flabbergasted as I listen to this conversation of people who really have never been involved in the scientific process, that they did not understand the infallibility.
▶ 1:09:02Sen. Marshall: When I think of the nih, the waste that has occurred. When I think of alzheimer's, the nih is the path we went down the last since 2005, 2006. Do you recall a study -- all nih funds went that direction for 20 years and then we find out, all my gosh. It was nih funded research. Do you remember that project?
▶ 1:09:30Dr. Bhattacharya: There is a whole set of projects that were focused on a particular hypothesis, the amyloid hypothesis, at the expense of other hypotheses. I agree with you about humility. It is the key to scientific progress. We have to have scientists who say we might be wrong because when we get data that disagrees with us when we have ideas that we disagree with, maybe that other idea is right and we are the one who is wrong.
▶ 1:10:01Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, I want to make sure that all the range of hypotheses are supported. That's how you make progress. One of the reasons we have not made progress on alzheimer's is because the nih supported a sufficiently wide range of hypotheses.
▶ 1:10:19Sen. Marshall: We also have eight different supporting institutes studying that do not communicate with each other as well. My guess is when you make a five-year grant, 20% of those should be stopped after a year because they went down a road that is a dead-end. It is time to start over. I am glad they are pausing these. There is a significant amount of waste, fraud and abuse and incompetence in the studies funded by the nih. Let's talk about chronic disease for a second.
▶ 1:10:49Sen. Marshall: The nih has spent a disproportionate amount of research on diseases that impacted a very small amount of americans. Meanwhile 60% of americans have a chronic disease. Speak about your vision of researching for digging out the causes and treatments of chronic disease, specifically how food as medicine might be intertwined in your vision.
▶ 1:11:11Dr. Bhattacharya: I think the chronic disease problem is something that the nih should have done a better job at the last several decades. The mission of the nih is to address the health needs of the american people and to expand life expectancy of the american people and we have not achieved that. It has flatlined. You say food is medicine.
▶ 1:11:36Dr. Bhattacharya: That is the kind of research I did that would be very difficult to get research support for from the nih because it is not within the scope of the people who decide what nih should support. We should expand the set of ideas to address a problem that we don't know how to address. The chronic disease problems of the united states are so broad that we need to have a lot more tolerance that the top scientists who control the ideas in their fields may be wrong.
▶ 1:12:05Dr. Bhattacharya: We need to allow other scientists who have other ideas and food as medicine might be one of them, to have support. I don't know what will be the answer. I do note --
▶ 1:12:16Sen. Marshall: Are you committed to helping us figure out the cause of his chronic diseases?
▶ 1:12:21Dr. Bhattacharya: I absolutely am. That is the heart and soul of the make america healthy again movement. Millions of americans will be looking to us to do that. If confirmed, I absolutely commit to doing that.
▶ 1:12:34Sen. Marshall: A big part of that is the trust. Thanks to Dr. fauci, no one trusts the nih or the cdc and we need a referee to say what is the latest science? Science is never settled. It is always changing. What is it in ultra-processed food that is causing this uptake in chronic diseases? Speak a little bit about the indirect cost of these situations.
▶ 1:13:02Sen. Marshall: I think most of us understand that that is just another drift -- grift for universities and we are paying in him are paying in h an unfair share of overhead going forward. I would like your commitment to ask flyover states to spread the love a little bit. It will prevent inbreeding and I hope that when you do realize that not every good scientific idea comes from the coast.
▶ 1:13:32Dr. Bhattacharya: I have colleagues from across the country and I hear your concern. The nih should be more committed than it has been to making sure every scientist no matter where they are, they don't have to be in california or the northeast quarter to get support. I commit to supporting the ideas, programs that the nih to identify scientists --
▶ 1:13:54Sen. Marshall: The indirect cost in kansas university or kansas state would be less than the coast. I don't know why it is their own problem. If their costs are that high, it is their own problem. It is not my fault. We can do the research more efficiently, less expensive at kansas state university or ku, then let's move it there.
▶ 1:14:14Chair Cassidy: Senator we have
▶ 1:14:17Some -- Senator Hassan Hassan: . We are still in the morning. Congratulations on your nomination, doctor. I will start with, if directed by the president to take action or break the law, would you follow the law or follow the president's directive?
▶ 1:14:37Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I don't believe the president would ever ask me to break the law.
▶ 1:14:42Sen. Hassan: That strains credulity given the last couple weeks and it is a disappointing answer. I would expect you to follow the law regardless whether the president directs you to break it. Now let me go to the second question. President trump has effectively frozen nih funding for existing grants including grants that directly treat people with rare diseases.
▶ 1:15:02Sen. Hassan: My office has heard from christine in brentwood, new hampshire, who is receiving treatment for colon cancer through an nih funded clinical trial but no longer knows the fate of her nickel care because these pieces have delayed doctors who might be needing to hire research assistants in the trial. This colon cancer trial may not have the research staff they need to continue treating patients.
▶ 1:15:29Sen. Hassan: If confirmed, will you commit to reversing the freezes at nih that have delayed lifesaving clinical trials?
▶ 1:15:38Dr. Bhattacharya: First, I absolutely commit to following the law in response to the previous question. But I also say on this question now, I think that if I am confirmed as director, I want to make sure that every single study that is advancing our knowledge about health, including colon cancer, goes forward, absolutely.
▶ 1:16:01Sen. Hassan: The freeze is really delaying things and can have an impact as you know on treatment, especially treatments for something like cancer which can be very time sensitive. That is the harm that these illegal freezes by this administration have really put into play here. And I hope he will speak up loudly and clearly and push back on the president and Mr. musk on these freezes. These were appropriated funds.
▶ 1:16:28Sen. Hassan: Article one of the constitution and the law says the administration is supposed to be spending those funds in accordance with the grants and clinical trial plans. President trump has not only effectively frozen nih funding for clinical trials, he has also stopped reviews of new grant applications to develop new cures for diseases such as pediatric cancer.
▶ 1:16:55Sen. Hassan: Research you do not lay out a plan for supporting research by our talented scientists across the country to help treat devastating diseases. You talked about this with some of my colleagues. But if confirmed, will you immediately restart all nih academic review committees and get all appropriated money out the door?
▶ 1:17:12Dr. Bhattacharya: If confirmed, absolutely, senator. My job will be to make sure those fundamental scientific meetings and activities happen. The purpose of the nih directorate is to support -- director is to support the mission of the nih.
▶ 1:17:30Sen. Hassan: Thank you. I will forgo the other questions I was going to ask and just saying this. For people watching this hearing, for parents who are worried about autism in particular, let me just say a couple of things. We see more cases of autism in this country than we use to for a number of reasons, part of it is we are better at diagnosing it earlier and understanding what the spectrum of it is.
▶ 1:17:59Sen. Hassan: We have ongoing science that is beginning to point at the nih among other places to genetic issues that may play a part in the development of autism and environmental issues. The now retracted study that suggested wrongly and fraudulently that autism might have a relationship to the mmr vaccine has been refuted by seven studies, every continent that involved hundreds of thousands of children.
▶ 1:18:26Sen. Hassan: So for parents out there who may think that vaccines have something to do with autism, there is no scientific evidence that it does. And it disappoints me greatly that neither you nor the secretary now of health and human services are willing to say that declaratively and strongly.
▶ 1:18:44Sen. Hassan: Because what you do when you hesitate, what the secretary does quite cynically in my view when he hesitates about this is you turn and sow doubt and worry at a time when we should be focused on actually finding the cure, the cause and the cure of autism. And similarly, when we talk about the causes of chronic disease in our kids, there is plenty of evidence. You have talked about it.
▶ 1:19:12Sen. Hassan: Working class folks in america have worse health than richer people. And yet you are about to join and administration that is dedicated to giving -- an administration that is dedicated to giving more tax cuts to billionaires and taking things away from families, money and services that can help them live healthier, better lives and have children less subjected to things like hunger and housing insecurity which contribute to chronic illness.
▶ 1:19:42Sen. Hassan: I am out of time and I think senator tuberville is next.
▶ 1:19:45Sen. Tuberville: Thank you. Thank you for being here. It is always good to run into somebody whose name is harder to pronounce. You have a hard job in front of you, but I share the ideas and the desire the president has two root out waste and the fraud we have in this country because we will not have a country left. It is going to be gone. He is doing the right thing. You will have a tough job. You would have to put your team together and do the same thing.
▶ 1:20:16Sen. Tuberville: We have got to make sure we use american taxpayer money the right way. Give me your plan of how you will do this when you come into office. How are you going to put your team together?
▶ 1:20:32Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I have a back out as an economist as well as being a doctor. The background leads me to understand that every dollar wasted on a frivolous study is a dollar not spent. Every dollar spent not needed is a dollar not spent on research.
▶ 1:20:55Dr. Bhattacharya: The team I will put together will be hyper focused to make sure that the portfolio grants that the nih funds is devoted to the chronic disease problem in this country. It will be devoted to making sure we have not just incremental progress but research projects that have the capacity to make huge advances in treatment for cancer, diabetes, obesity. That is how I'm going to decide what the team is.
▶ 1:21:22Dr. Bhattacharya: And I am blessed in some ways because the nih already has so many excellent scientists that advised me on the areas I don't know about. I want to tap that resource and make sure I talked to every sickle person who is already a leader at the nih to understand where the opportunities are.
▶ 1:21:36Sen. Tuberville: Thank you. For the past four years, I have been on this committee. We have obviously gone through covid. Devastating to not just our country but the world. Transparency and trust will have to be earned again. Most people across this country don't know what the hell nih stands for. But now they do because of covid. You said that science has to be reliable. Exactly. But people also have to trust.
▶ 1:22:04Sen. Tuberville: We are finding out now we have bio labs in ukraine where a war is going on. And we are funding them. You have to be on top of that. American people have to trust you that you will say, listen, we are going to keep an eye on the bio labs in north carolina or wherever we have them because it scares me to death what is going on. What is your plan of getting trust back in this country?
▶ 1:22:26Dr. Bhattacharya: First of all, I want to make sure -- I went to work with congress to make sure there is appropriate regulation of any research. Nih should not be doing any research that has the potential to cause a pandemic. I want to work with congress to make sure that happens. As far as trust, the key thing is we have to be utterly open. If I am confirmed, I will be at the head of the organization that is a scientific organization.
▶ 1:22:53Dr. Bhattacharya: As a citizen, I would often look for responses from the nih and they would be fully redacted during the pandemic. You cannot have trust unless you are transparent. If I am confirmed as nih director, I fully commit to making sure the american people can see all of the activities of the nih openly with limited sort of obfuscation which has characterized unfortunately the nih's way they interact with the american people.
▶ 1:23:21Sen. Tuberville: I think that starts with being very visual on television, telling people the truth. Don't hide anything. Because we happen hiding things for years. That does not work. We found that out. Chairman cassidy and I wrote a letter under the desk wrote ain't -- wrote a letter to the nih on the issue of transitioning genders. The study followed all of these children. Two of them committed suicide. Devastating.
▶ 1:23:51Sen. Tuberville: How can we make sure the nih does not grant funds to things like this?
▶ 1:23:53Dr. Bhattacharya: First of all, if you have a negative result and it is politically inconvenient to you, you have an obligation as a scientist to report it. The nih funds a study that shows it does not reduce suicide rate among adolescents. That researcher has an obligation to report that even though it may be politically inconvenient. I want to make sure nih researchers are required to report even negative results. There are ways to do that we can talk about.
▶ 1:24:25Dr. Bhattacharya: But I think as far as the prioritization of studies, as I was telling the senator, I want to make sure the studies are focused on the diseases that are hurting americans, obesity. A lot of the research that is so easy to come up with, there is one of a shrimp on a treadmill for instance that was funded, it is not that I am necessarily against research like that but the american taxpayer should be focused on the needs of the american taxpayers and the research should be focused on
▶ 1:24:55Dr. Bhattacharya: Those needs, the health needs of americans. I want to make sure if confirmed the nih does that.
▶ 1:25:03Sen. Tuberville: Good luck.
▶ 1:25:04Dr. Bhattacharya: Thank you.
▶ 1:25:06Sen. Tuberville: Senator hickenlooper.
▶ 1:25:13Sen. Hickenlooper: It turned itself off. Thank you for being here and for your service. As we heard today and you are well aware of, this cap on the indirect fees for all nih grants has been traumatic to the system. It is now in a pause.
▶ 1:25:31Sen. Hickenlooper: Clearly the solution is more transparent, well thought out, fair system by with three shirts all over the country is at a level playing field. Let's assume we get the legal stuff sorted out, the chaos comes down a little bit. How long would it take to create a new system like that?
▶ 1:25:52Dr. Bhattacharya: I don't know if it would take a new system necessarily. The key thing is as you said the transparency. Audits of university spending of indirect costs would help inform decisions. It is a complicated question.
▶ 1:26:08Dr. Bhattacharya: Of course I was not involved in the decision, but if I am confirmed as nih director, that is something I would look very carefully at the broader problem is we have deep distrust by the american people and universities and the scientific establishment during the pandemic. To address that transparency is key. That transparency will solve the problem.
▶ 1:26:32Sen. Hickenlooper: We agree on that. We worked on a project that I think you know a little that about. The idea is to codify research activities at the nih on co-occurring disorders of down syndrome across multiple institutes. I am asking your endorsement. I am asking if you will be willing to work with us on this. We are very serious about this.
▶ 1:26:58Sen. Hickenlooper: Also looking more broadly at cross institute work at the nih to try to unlock new discoveries.
▶ 1:27:02Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I am absolutely committed to that and would be delighted to work with you on that project that you just mentioned as well as other projects. I think there is tremendous opportunities for cross disciplinary work across the nih . It is at the back of the minds of so many proposals that the nih I have seen over the years to try to make sure the nih research does not stay silent within one institute but is useful for researchers across all of nih.
▶ 1:27:28Sen. Hickenlooper: I want to spend a little bit of time -- thank you for that. I appreciate that. A moment that we heard a lot of people suggest that the nih is allowing the united states to be taken advantage of in some ways. One fact that is striking to me in a 10 year period, 99% of drugs approved by the fda were developed with research to a larger or lesser extent from nih .
▶ 1:27:59Sen. Hickenlooper: Are you worried about the U.S. ability to maintain that leadership? Do you think we are being ripped off in some way? The fact that we are affluent enough and care about scion enough -- scientific enough to care about the research, that it is unfair.
▶ 1:28:16Dr. Bhattacharya: The united states is the greatest country on earth and one of the reasons it is is it has a sincere commitment to doing fundamental research that benefits all of humanity. I thing much of the nih research does exactly that. I don't view it as ripping off when a scientist comes up with an amazing idea that solves -- that treats diabetes better. Everybody on earth benefits from that.
▶ 1:28:40Dr. Bhattacharya: I think nih is fundamentally an institution aimed at the public good.
▶ 1:28:47Sen. Hickenlooper: Here is a more difficult question which is suggestive. Do you think we are doing enough on research? In terms of where you are coming in, part of your seed will be we are running out of good ideas. Are there a shortage of ideas that demand -- a shortage of things that demand our attention?
▶ 1:29:07Dr. Bhattacharya: As I outlined in my opening statement come and there are real problems and how the scientific establishment is operating. The replicability crisis. The lack of ability to focus on diseases that are inflicting americans. And a tentativeness to focus on the big ideas. No matter what the budget is, I want to reform it in that direction. I am happy to work with congress. It is congress that decides the budget of the nih.
▶ 1:29:32Sen. Hickenlooper: We decide it based on a lot of your advice so be thinking on that. Obviously, increased vaccine skepticism. In the past year, we are seeing the number of kindergarten kids exhibited for one or more routine vaccinations rising to the highest levels recorded.
▶ 1:29:54Sen. Hickenlooper: Is this rising skepticism around vaccines going to be vaccine related research at nih a lesser priority? The need to invest in research on viruses and things that vaccines can addressed.
▶ 1:30:11Dr. Bhattacharya: I think the increasing skepticism, which I view as a hangover from the covid pandemic over statement about how the covid vaccine worked, makes it more important to do vaccine research. Secretary kennedy already said he favors the mmr vaccine. I agree with that.
▶ 1:30:30Dr. Bhattacharya: I think the research -- maybe I am naive but I believe fundamentally if research is done right, is wreck level -- is replicable, is persuasive, that is the philosophy I operated in my career and intend to keep doing that have confirmed.
▶ 1:30:48Sen. Hickenlooper: From your lips to god's ear.
▶ 1:30:51Chair Cassidy: Senator moody.
▶ 1:30:52Sen. Moody: Mr. chairman, good to see you. As you know, I am the most junior member on this committee and recently transitioned from my role as ag in the state of florida, the great free state of florida, to U.S. senator.
▶ 1:31:09Sen. Moody: One of the things I have enjoyed the most is these confirmation hearings because so much of what I worked on in my prior roles, whether that was a judge or federal prosecutor or the attorney general, have translated in my ability to be able to truly in a meaningful way talk to the nominees about their vision for the agencies or the roles they are taking over and how they might bring a different perspective or leadership or ideas to bear. I particularly enjoyed that in our discussion.
▶ 1:31:40Sen. Moody: I am honored that I was the last meeting you had before your confirmation hearing today. As you know, in florida as we were experiencing covid here in the united states, florida took a very deliberate scientific, very thorough approach to making decisions.
▶ 1:31:59Sen. Moody: We tried to bring to bear many varying opinions as to not only what we were experiencing as to the virus, but what were the best ways to go about making decisions and providing leadership and protecting the health, safety, and welfare of our citizens. To some extent, many of those decisions where challenged -- were challenged or even the first of their kind in the nation because we were examining all aspect of information coming in.
▶ 1:32:28Sen. Moody: Not just what was being pushed through certain narratives. And in many respects, many ideas and scientific approaches were suppressed. I want to talk to you a little better about that because I know you have been such an advocate of how we led in florida, the things we did. We opened our schools right back up right away. We were sued by a teachers union.
▶ 1:32:57Sen. Moody: And everything from how we dealt with masks to social distancing to the vaccines, there were misrepresentations abound during this time. So I want to talk to you about your opinion on how florida handled that and how you think that might translate into your new role.
▶ 1:33:19Sen. Moody: Do you feel like your views and scientific opinions might have been disregarded or set aside in pursuit of some government narrative that may not have been based especially even to the six foot rule for example? My office led a grand jury investigation on all kinds of miss repetitions from the six foot rule to the vaccines. I want to get your thoughts on that and how it might affect your role moving forward if in fact are confirmed.
▶ 1:33:47Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, thank you for that question. I am tremendously proud to have been involved in advising the florida response to the pandemic. One of the things I was actually involved in, the case that resulted in the florida kids being able to go back to school. Even as my kids were left out of school, not allowed to go back into the school building for a year and a half, the kids in florida were allowed. As a result, their results are so much better.
▶ 1:34:15Dr. Bhattacharya: Florida has a lower overall death rate during the pandemic than california did. I think florida's response to the pandemic was a tremendous success. I am glad you highlighted the role of censorship and restriction of scientific discussion. It was so refreshing to be to be allowed to speak my scientific views in florida during the pandemic. I think the root problem, the pandemic is a difficult thing.
▶ 1:34:43Dr. Bhattacharya: So many people have different ideas in an environment of uncertainty. The root problem was people who have alternative ideas were suppressed. I personally was subjected to censorship by the actions of the biden administration during the pandemic. Science to succeed needs free speech and needs an environment where there is tolerance for dissent.
▶ 1:35:06Dr. Bhattacharya: And the reason I think why florida did so well was it provided an outlet so that the government of florida, the state of florida could adopt the best ideas. It is not that no mistakes were ever made. You cannot say that. Everyone made a mistake in the pandemic. But to do that well you have to allow people to speak with each other openly even when the ideas are controversial.
▶ 1:35:29Sen. Moody: So much of what we discussed and what you want to bring to bear I believe it is taking publications or studies and having those replicated and making replication of studies be a priority for nih because so often you have people publishing and there is not that. Can you elaborate?
▶ 1:35:49Dr. Bhattacharya: There is a crisis of publication. Studies are not replicable. They do the study and someone else tries to do the study and they will not cooperate. Other teams try to do it and cannot replicate it. Many studies are published and are not subject to replication at all. Replication is the heart and soul of what truth in science is. If I run a study and you find the same answers, I am more likely to be right.
▶ 1:36:17Dr. Bhattacharya: I want the nih to be committed to that notion of truth rather than the authority.
▶ 1:36:21Sen. Moody: I sent you up to go overtime. I apologize.
▶ 1:36:25Chair Cassidy: Senator kim.
▶ 1:36:27Sen. Kim: Thank you, Mr. chairman. You said before you were in favor of decentralizing the decision-making at the nih to allow there to be more centers of power, concern of small individuals from dominating decision-making. You still stand by that? If so, what is the importance of decentralization?
▶ 1:36:50Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I do stand by that. The key thing to me about decentralization is the diversity of ideas to address uncertainties. When we have problems we don't have the answer to, we have to allow there to be many people with different ideas to test them. Having a diversity of ideas, we talked already with some of the other senators about making sure the scientists from smaller states get access to support from nih.
▶ 1:37:21Dr. Bhattacharya: That is one way to do it. Having younger scientists, early career scientists.
▶ 1:37:25Sen. Kim: But in terms of who is making the actual decision, not where the resources are going. Is that correct?
▶ 1:37:30Dr. Bhattacharya: If I am confirmed as nih director, the job will be to decide how to set processes to making those applications. I want to make sure the processes allow early care investigators -- early career investigators to have support. I want scientists from nontraditional universities, not just stanford and harvard, to have support.
▶ 1:37:55Dr. Bhattacharya: I want to picture people with different points of view about scientific hypotheses, not just ammo that hypotheses but other hypotheses have capacity.
▶ 1:38:04Sen. Kim: In terms of the decision-making processes, I guess my question is if you are pushing for decentralized decision-making process, does that mean you would oppose the hhs secretary or trump white house from telling you where to spend money or how to make great decisions?
▶ 1:38:25Dr. Bhattacharya: I agree with the goal to make america healthy. That is a decision about allocation to different disease areas. The scientific ideas --
▶ 1:38:38Sen. Kim: What if you were told to fund this university?
▶ 1:38:43Dr. Bhattacharya: There is a process for deciding who gets grants, specific grant.
▶ 1:38:49Sen. Kim: Is that one of the processes? Do you thing that is a valid way in which decisions can be made at the nih?
▶ 1:38:55Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I don't believe the secretary or the president would ask me to do that.
▶ 1:39:00Sen. Kim: The reason I ask that, you talk about chronic diseases. I think we can all agree about chronic diseases. My question to you, do you think our work on research in chronic disease needs to come at the expense of research for infectious disease?
▶ 1:39:17Dr. Bhattacharya: I think the allocation of funds to the different disease areas come my first, congress has a tremendously important role in deciding that. I will work with congress for sure to make that happen.
▶ 1:39:26Sen. Kim: You think we can probably do both, both chronic disease research and infectious disease research?
▶ 1:39:32Dr. Bhattacharya: Yes.
▶ 1:39:33Sen. Kim: The reason I ask this and mentioned the questions about a secretary's ability to direct nih, he had a quote that really stuck with me and alarmed me. He said, "I am going to say to nih scientists, god bless you all, thank you for your public service. We are going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years." now does that sound like a good idea?
▶ 1:39:54Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I have had many conversations with secretary kennedy and he is supportive of excellent infectious disease research.
▶ 1:40:03Sen. Kim: You believe he no luggage stand by that quote?
▶ 1:40:06Dr. Bhattacharya: I don't know the provenance of that quote, may be twitter or something.
▶ 1:40:11Sen. Kim: He said it at a conference.
▶ 1:40:13Dr. Bhattacharya: Again, I don't know. But my interactions with senator kennedy, he sincerely committed to making sure that every health need of this country is met, including infectious diseases.
▶ 1:40:26Sen. Kim: In terms of a few other things, are there any vaccines out there you are concerned about in terms of safety?
▶ 1:40:31Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I was concerned about the covid vaccines for young men causing myocarditis in 2021.
▶ 1:40:39Sen. Kim: And do you have a view on long covid?
▶ 1:40:42Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I think it is a problem that affects millions of americans and we need answers.
▶ 1:40:47Sen. Kim: Is it something worth nih funding?
▶ 1:40:50Dr. Bhattacharya: Yes.
▶ 1:40:51Sen. Kim: You had a quote that "there are more pressing health needs of the 1.1 billion that the nih will spend on covid." is that something you still stand by, that quote?
▶ 1:41:03Dr. Bhattacharya: I think the funds that have been spent to this date on blanco but have not provided answers. I think they deserve answers. We need to do better with the funds spent at nih so it produces better diagnostics, better cures, better prevention.
▶ 1:41:17Sen. Kim: On transparency just real quick, you talked about the importance of transparency. Are you familiar with something called the richardson waiver?
▶ 1:41:25Dr. Bhattacharya: No, senator.
▶ 1:41:28Sen. Kim: I ask if you are confirmed that you look into this. The secretary reversed this and it reverses some transparency and public comment periods. Thank you.
▶ 1:41:37Chair Cassidy: Thank you, senator kim.
▶ 1:41:39Sen. Banks: Thank, Mr. chairman. Congratulations on your nomination. Your nomination is one of the most exciting picks from the entire trump administration. You showed incredible courage in speaking the truth about covid-19 when much of the west of the world stayed silent about it. Free thinking people everywhere have not forgotten that, what you stood for then.
▶ 1:42:04Sen. Banks: It is a regular to see you are dominated to be the head of the very institution whose leaders persecuted you because of what you believed in during that period. I want to start by asking you about covid. Lockdowns cost irreparable harm to our nation, and they are still harming us five years later. What is nih's proper role in a pandemic? And how did director francis collins overstep that role during his time?
▶ 1:42:30Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, the proper role of scientists in a pandemic is to answer basic questions policymakers have about what the right policy should be. Our role is not to make decisions to say you should not be saying goodbye to your grandfather as he is dying in a hospital. It should not be to say you cannot have a funeral because it is too dangerous. The scientists should say, here is what the risks are. And then you decide whether you take the risk.
▶ 1:43:01Dr. Bhattacharya: The role of the scientist should not be to say you cannot send your kids to school for two years, you should close hospitals so they cannot treat heart attack patients. The role of scientists should be to address those problems by giving good data and let people -- science should be an engine for freedom. Knowledge and freedom. Not something where it stands on top of society and says you must do this, this might end this or else.
▶ 1:43:28Dr. Bhattacharya: It should not be pushing -- this, this, and this or else, it should not be pushing a vaccine. I think the mandates that many scientists push have led to the lack of confidence that the public has in science. If science is a force for freedom and for knowledge, it will have universal support. That is what the role of science is.
▶ 1:43:54Sen. Banks: Very well put. You were demonized for co-authoring this. Dr. fauci called it total nonsense. Rochelle walensky called it wrong and unsafe. Your opponent who wrote the john snow memorandum said it could harm half a million people. Reading what you wrote in the declaration, you were undeniably right about all of it.
▶ 1:44:20Sen. Banks: You wrote "current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health." doctor, what does the public health data tell us today in the aftermath of covid-19 in 2023 and 2024? What does the data tell us today?
▶ 1:44:44Dr. Bhattacharya: Millions of students were out of school for years. Learning loss, they will have consequent is throughout their entire life. There were people who skipped their cancer screening who have late stage cancer now that should have been picked up earlier. There is the trillions of dollars we spent that actually caused the inflation we still suffer from. The u.n.
▶ 1:45:08Dr. Bhattacharya: In the early pandemic estimated almost 100 million people would face starvation as a consequent of the lockdowns. This is devastating. This is devastating policy that did not need to happen.
▶ 1:45:25Dr. Bhattacharya: The swedish example, for instance, where there is lower death rates in sweden relative to their neighbors including norway, including germany, which locked down more, is an example that we did not need to do the lockdowns. Florida having lower numbers is an example where the lockdowns did not save lives but had from it its consequences on the well-being of the poor, working class, children, and vulnerable.
▶ 1:45:52Sen. Banks: I want to read a little more. You said in the declaration "keeping students out of school is a grave injustice." now we see student achievement and grades well below pandemic levels. You also wrote that "young low risk adults should work normally rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should be open.
▶ 1:46:15Sen. Banks: Arts, music, sports, and other activities should resume." now we see many communities and cities are unsafe today and have been dramatically changed because of the lockdowns during covid. In a nutshell, what would you do differently now than what these obviously ill advised leaders at nih and otherwise in other places do? How would you have done it differently in a nutshell?
▶ 1:46:40Dr. Bhattacharya: I still would have opposed the lockdowns. But if confirmed as nih director, I would have allowed there to be scientific debate and discussion. Their western medicine certainty what to do during a pandemic.
▶ 1:46:51Sen. Banks: Thank you. I yield back.
▶ 1:46:58Chair Cassidy: Senator blunt rochester.
▶ 1:47:01Sen. Blunt Rochester: I have promoted. Thank you for meeting with me ahead of time as well as your testimony today. I want to echo some of the concerns that my colleagues share about the risk to the entire nih research enterprise. One the concern about the reporting -- one, the concern about the reporting of 1200 scientists fired.
▶ 1:47:31Sen. Blunt Rochester: We talked about the ability to recruit and retain this kind of talent. Two, the blanket an illegal 15% cap on indirect costs on our research institutions even in a bipartisan way that was concerned about that. The funding and communication freezes.
▶ 1:47:50Sen. Blunt Rochester: Cuts and programs for training for future generations of scientists and the fear that supporting diverse trials will no longer be a priority because serious concern -- cause serious concern and alarm. Look no further than alzheimer's disease and dementia. As we all know, alzheimer's is a debilitating and costly disease affecting millions of americans and $360 million in 2024.
▶ 1:48:21Sen. Blunt Rochester: But this does not include the cost of care that is provided by 11 million individuals. It really does not even touch the toll it takes on an individual and their families. I don't think there is anybody that has not been impacted by it. Even my mother and my grandmother. Some of the most important work that nih has been doing is on the disparities in cognitive aging.
▶ 1:48:47Sen. Blunt Rochester: Do you think the administration's executive orders and determinations of aging research projects is helpful or harmful to our understanding of all timers -- of all timers disease?
▶ 1:49:03Dr. Bhattacharya: I am fully committed to make sure all the health needs of every american is met no matter what their race, color, sex. The goal, the mission of the nih is to meet that. The representation of minorities in trials as you mentioned is something I am fully committed to. I see nothing in the president's executive orders to contradict that. Quite the opposite.
▶ 1:49:28Sen. Blunt Rochester: The challenge is they are vague and people are questioning, what do they mean? What are the impacts? Given the fact that these programs have been canceled or delayed include the maximizing access to research careers programs to my training grant to support pre-and postdoctoral scholars, the 2025 nih summer internship program, the advancing diversity and aging research program, and the firing of 10% of the staff at the
▶ 1:50:00Sen. Blunt Rochester: Centers for alzheimer's and related dementias. That is what causes the concern. Because we are thinking about the pipeline of those individuals that are going to work in this area. So can you help me to just understand how getting rid of these programs is going to improve our understanding of alzheimer's prevention and treatment?
▶ 1:50:21Sen. Blunt Rochester: And what safeguards would you put in place to ensure that these changes don't lead to poor health outcomes by any gender, race, disability or ethnic group, or other vulnerable communities?
▶ 1:50:33Dr. Bhattacharya: First, as you know, I was not involved in any decision-making at the nih up to this point. If I am confirmed, I would look to make sure that those programs and other programs if they are appropriate will continue. I want to make sure every single scientist that is doing this kind of lifesaving work including all timers disease, especially maybe alzheimer's disease, and also science is supported.
▶ 1:51:03Sen. Blunt Rochester: The reality is that we know that individuals with down syndrome have a staggering 90% chance of acquiring all in their lifetime. Lack and hispanic individuals are more likely to develop alzheimer's.
▶ 1:51:21Sen. Blunt Rochester: In a lifetime, women are twice as likely as men, so I have some questions that I potentially have to submit for the record, but will you commit to ensuring researchers specifically studying health disparities and working to increase clinical trial diversity will not be targeted or penalized based on your work?
▶ 1:51:39Dr. Bhattacharya: I commit to making sure researchers are addressing the health needs of minority populations and basically every american will have the support they need.
▶ 1:51:47Sen. Blunt Rochester: A lot of folks are using codewords and selecting out whether it is a grant, they are doing targeting sweeps, word searches. Will you also commit that you will not do that as well?
▶ 1:52:01Dr. Bhattacharya: I guess I am not sure what you mean by targeting codewords but I will say that I believe very strongly, I committed my life to addressing the health needs of vulnerable people, including minority populations. I am absolutely committed to that and that the nih continues to do research to address those health needs.
▶ 1:52:19Sen. Blunt Rochester: My time has expired. Mr. chairman, thank you. We want to make sure we work with you.
▶ 1:52:26Dr. Bhattacharya: I look forward to that.
▶ 1:52:27Sen. Blunt Rochester: That these executive orders do not have the adverse impact we are already seeing. Thank you.
▶ 1:52:33Chair Cassidy: Thank you.
▶ 1:52:34Sen. Hawley: Congratulations on your nomination. Thank you for being here. I enjoyed getting to visit with you today. Let me start with the subject you and I visited about and that I also asked your soon-to-be boss robert kennedy junior when he was sitting right where you are, and that is the use of aborted fetal tissue in nih funded research.
▶ 1:52:58Sen. Hawley: I asked now secretary kennedy directly if he will reinstate the trump policy that prohibits aborted fetal tissue research in nih funded grants. He said that he would. Let me ask you the same to make sure we are all on the same page. Do you support that policy? Will you prohibit the use nih nih of aborted fetal tissue in research, and -- nih funded research?
▶ 1:53:24Dr. Bhattacharya: I follow the lead of secretary kennedy and president trump on this. We have alternatives. During the pandemic, I would often be on catholic radio and people would ask me whether the mrna vaccines were made or developed with aborted fetal cells. A lot of folks calling and had ethical objections.
▶ 1:53:50Dr. Bhattacharya: In public health, we need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody, and so having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted is not just an ethical issue but a public health issue. We nd to make sure that everyone is willing to take the kinds of progress that we make so I am absolutely committed to that.
▶ 1:54:13Sen. Hawley: Very good. Thank you. It is not only an issue of moral principle although it is an extremely input and issue a moral principle in the first instance, but it is also a public health issue when we think about millions and millions of americans who are understandably very concerned about the components if you will of many of these vaccines, and we want them to be able to access this on the same basis as others, so thank you for making that point.
▶ 1:54:38Sen. Hawley: Let me ask you about something else that you are soon-to-be boss secretary kennedy has said recently. He has talked about his concerns that nih is working to advance big pharma's bottom line rather than the health needs and health interests of the american people. He recently wrote in the wall street journal that he wants to propose stopping nih funding going to researchers who have conflict of interest who have a financial benefit with a big pharma company. Can you comment on that? You support that effort?
▶ 1:55:10Sen. Hawley: Can you comment on the importance of making sure that what we are doing with our nih funding is prioritizing the health of americans, not the profit of any particular corporation?
▶ 1:55:19Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I think the transparency and conflict of interest is fundamental to the trust in science and I am committed to make sure -- making sure that is at the center of the work of nih . I also commit, and I mentioned this earlier, to supporting research on products that are already off patent that do not necessarily have a drug company behind it could have potentially enormous benefit for preventing
▶ 1:55:51Dr. Bhattacharya: Chronic diseases. I think the nih ought to be doing research in support of the public good, not just parochial research and support of a few -- in support of a few companies.
▶ 1:56:01Sen. Hawley: It is important to restore the credibly and trust that the american people have lost in the nih at our scientific apparatus because of the financial comforts of interest, because of the prevalence of big pharma, but also because of what happened during covid-19. I just want to ask you about that in my remaining moments here. I had the opportunity to question the author or one of the co-authors of the now infamous proximal origin paper. Dr.
▶ 1:56:30Sen. Hawley: Robert gary is the individual I had the opportunity to question. He wrote that paper on march 17, 2020. You probably remember this is the paper that infamously stated, and I will quote it now, sars-cov-2 is not a laboratory construct or a manipulated virus. Under questioning by me, Dr. gary admitted he had no knowledge of that at the time. He wrote that in march of 2020. He had no evidence to suggest that was the case.
▶ 1:56:57Sen. Hawley: This was in fact a piece of propaganda. He had many products reviewed from peer-reviewed journals because he has not followed peer-reviewed standards. That paper as you remember was used as the basis of government directed censorship to those in the scientific community like yourself to millions of ordinary americans.
▶ 1:57:21Sen. Hawley: The net effect of this was a tremendous loss in confidence by the american people in the nih and in our public health officials. Uni discussed the vital importance of restoring some of the current ability. Talk to us about how you go about doing that.
▶ 1:57:35Dr. Bhattacharya: That episode is a low point in the history of science. The top officials at the nih abused their position to hide support for research that may have caused the pandemic. I commit to making sure that all of the activities of the nih not just backwards but going forward are transparent and open to the people. That is important for the future of nih and science itself.
▶ 1:58:02Chair Cassidy: Thank you. Now, senator alsobrooks.
▶ 1:58:06Sen. Alsobrooks: Thank you, Mr. chair. Good morning, Dr. bhattacharya. I know you had great experience at nih, so it goes without saying that nih is a crown jewel not only in the state of maryland which happens to be my state, but a crown jewel of the country where we have many, many talented scientists and researchers who are there. That brings me to the quick line of questioning I have. I want to sound the alarm that some very dangerous things are happening to scientists and researchers at nih right now.
▶ 1:58:35Sen. Alsobrooks: I want to ask you whether you believe it is appropriate, and you mentioned a moment ago a concept around knowledge and freedom for scientists, and whether you believe it is appropriate under any circumstance to retaliate against scientists or medical researchers on research they have done. Do you believe that?
▶ 1:58:52Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I have been subject to that myself. I know what it is like to be subject of devastating takedowns by top officials and at the nih specifically. I will never do that. I absolutely commit to make sure scientists are treated respectfully, especially those that disagree with me.
▶ 1:59:09Sen. Alsobrooks: You even said that you believe and you have spoken out against a culture of conformity in science and have criticized institutions that you allege destroy the reputations of scientists who do not conform with their viewpoint. I believe that is what is happening right now at nih. In fact, you are boss, Mr. kennedy when I questioned him about whether or not he would supplement his judgment for that of scientists, he said he intended to replace bad scientists with good scientists. Is this your viewpoint as well?
▶ 1:59:39Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I think -- I don't know exactly the nature of that conversation, but I think the way that you decide what is good and bad science is by conversation, by data, by replication. I am absolutely committed to making sure those processes are in place at the nih.
▶ 1:59:58Sen. Alsobrooks: Ok. And you agree we should never retaliate or even fire a scientist because of his or her peer review?
▶ 2:00:09Dr. Bhattacharya: I think retaliation and conflict that characterize the kind of discussions we had among scientists, that comes from the top of the scientific institutions, and I commit to making sure, in fact one of the 5.I emphasized in my opening statement, that we allow a culture of dissent and respectful conversation about scientific matters rooted in data at the nih.
▶ 2:00:32Sen. Alsobrooks: I want to ask about one other area of concern. It is no secret this administration feels absolutely triggered by any mention of equality, any mention of inclusion and the president himself and the president himself in his own words last night essentially said america intends to erase any reference whatsoever to race or gender.
▶ 2:00:52Sen. Alsobrooks: Having said that, I would like to refer to a study that you co-authored called persistent racial disparities and survival following heart transpiration to ask you whether or not -- because I understand there are some watch lists that have been created. Whether you believe on the basis of this study, should that would be placed on a dei watchlist because it references racial disparities?
▶ 2:01:14Dr. Bhattacharya: I am not aware of any watchlist. I don't intend to implement any watchlist. I will say this. The health needs of minority populations in this country are a vital priority for me. In fact, the health of every single american is important to me. I want to make sure the research the nih addresses is the health needs and I don't see anything in the president's orders that contradict that. In fact, quite the contrary.
▶ 2:01:44Dr. Bhattacharya: What I heard from the secretary and from the president's let's make america healthy, making all americans.
▶ 2:01:49Sen. Alsobrooks: I don't want to be naive. He also mentioned that he is triggered by anything that includes equality or inclusion or anything about race and gender. The center that you could direct mentions that your mission is to diversify the set of researchers working in the field, and I want to know whether or not based on that, and in that it mentions
▶ 2:02:22Sen. Alsobrooks: Diverse scholars which I think is a reference to race and gender and people with different backgrounds, so whether you believe this project which received 872 million dollars -- eight ei$872 million.
▶ 2:02:42Dr. Bhattacharya: It was less than that. I am part of the project addressing alzheimer's disease, and I say further that the idea that diverse scientists, to me what that means is scientists with verse ideas about scientific topics.
▶ 2:03:05Dr. Bhattacharya: I think fundamentally what matters is, does a scientist have an idea that advances the scientific field they are in? Do they have an idea that ends up addressing the health needs of americans? That is the key thing. To me, that diverse set of ideas, allowing people to disagree with each other is fundamental.
▶ 2:03:25Sen. Alsobrooks: That includes racial disparities. That is the work you have done, right?
▶ 2:03:30Dr. Bhattacharya: Racial disparities are important to identify, but more important is to address the health needs of every american, minorities or not.
▶ 2:03:39Sen. Alsobrooks: Thank you so much.
▶ 2:03:40Chair Cassidy: Thank you. Very good sneaking the last comment in after the buzzer.
▶ 2:03:45Sen. Husted: Thank you, chairman cassidy. Dr. bhattacharya, thank you for being here. As someone who grew up watching professional basketball in the 1970's and 1980's, calling you Dr. j is a fun thing.
▶ 2:03:59Dr. Bhattacharya: A real thrill for me to hear that.
▶ 2:04:04Sen. Husted: Your nomination frankly at this time in america is a victory for the scientific method. I know that you have been courageous in offering divergent views and backing them up and encouraging people to think differently about how we solve complex problems. That is what science is supposed to be about, so thank you for being a champion of that during difficult circumstances.
▶ 2:04:34Sen. Husted: I want to just talk briefly about something we talked about, that we have heard a lot of talk about inflation in america, but in this century with the number one inflationary cost that affects americans, american business, quality of life has been health care inflation.
▶ 2:04:54Sen. Husted: And the idea that we can think differently about how we address healthy living, our diets, how we improve the quality of life and drive down costs and improve outcomes is something I think is sorely missing today in the conversation about health care thinking differently about it is critical to doing that, so just give some thoughts about how you think your role as director
▶ 2:05:26Sen. Husted: Could help advance that conversation.
▶ 2:05:26Dr. Bhattacharya: I really enjoyed our conversation we had in your office about exactly this. The chronic disease problem, let's just take obesity. It seems almost intractable. For decades, we have had body weight go up, diabetes rates, and anyway that is an indictment on how the nih has function. The goal of the nih is to make americans healthy.
▶ 2:05:55Dr. Bhattacharya: To have research that makes americans healthy. I want to allow as broad a set of ideas as possible to address this problem because the set of ideas we have had so far have not addressed the problem. It has continued to get worse. Fundamentally to me, this is an element of faith I guess, I believe if we allow science to have lots of different ideas that we will be able to make the health better of the american people.
▶ 2:06:20Dr. Bhattacharya: But if we say only a few scientists with their ideas are allowed to have support with a narrow one school of thought, we will not make progress. I do not have the answer how to solve the obesity crisis. If I did, I already would have published it, but I want to make sure that the scientists that is out there has the support of the nih even if their ideas contradict what the top scientists of the nih currently think.
▶ 2:06:44Sen. Husted: I spoke on this with secretary kennedy. I know that this goes across agencies from the department of agriculture to health and human services, but it is a tremendous cost to the american taxpayer, to the quality of life, to american competitiveness, all of those issues, sustainability of our federal budget, so I just encourage creative thinking and collaboration on that issue.
▶ 2:07:13Sen. Husted: Lots of competition these days on nih grants, talking about containing costs of how we do scientific research, making sure we are reporting more lead on the target of the research. I know that in ohio we have a number of entities, universities, cleveland clinic, hospitals and so forth that are involved in this.
▶ 2:07:35Sen. Husted: I really believe there are many institutions who are willing to work with you in sharpening their pencils, getting better, forcing change in how these grants are used, distributed, and focused on the real research that needs to be done. Just give some thoughts if you would about how we can advance these conversations on this topic.
▶ 2:08:03Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I think the universities are partners of the nih not opponents. I think there is a lot of distress now coming out of the pandemic of the scientific enterprise and universities also. The way to address the distrust is transparency and I am committed to working with you and with others to make sure that we can restore that trust by establishing transparency. Where did the administered of costs go?
▶ 2:08:34Dr. Bhattacharya: That can be answered with audits princeton. Establishing rates, if confirmed that is something I will look into. I want to make sure every single dollar the american taxpayer entrusts to the nih will go to address the health needs of americans.
▶ 2:08:52Sen. Husted: Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 2:08:54Chair Cassidy: Thank you. Senator markey.
▶ 2:08:56Sen. Markey: Thank you. I have been hearing from researchers in massachusetts and across the country about actions taken by trump and musk and slowing down research into all timers, stroke, cancer, and our mental health crisis. One phd researcher working on finding better treatments for depression to prevent suicide said hiring and funding freezes have "stalled" their research.
▶ 2:09:25Sen. Markey: It will stall the development of safer therapies on depression by years. A massachusetts doctor and mentor says that trump's executive orders and musk's doge minions are leading us to face "an enormous brain drain" as there is little confidence that these institutions will be able to function normally.
▶ 2:09:49Sen. Markey: This doctor is thinking about leaving the country which would mean the united states cedes ground in the fight to lead the world in biomedical innovation. A cancer researcher at the university of massachusetts said that the trump administration's cuts to nih "wilson progress in curing human disease down the drain." a professor of medicine and science working on improving care for americans with dementia had their grant review meeting
▶ 2:10:19Sen. Markey: With nih abruptly canceled without any plans to reschedule because of this administration's funding freezes. This will delay research by several months at least. Inconsistent funding will be layoffs and disruption to services that improve care at nursing homes.
▶ 2:10:40Sen. Markey: And just this week, I received copies of letters sent to researchers who received funding from the nih to study alzheimer's disease and improve support for caregivers and to study how to improve mental health care in primary care settings. Terminated funding for these saying the premise of the grant is incompatible with nih priorities because the study explicitly included lgbtq people.
▶ 2:11:11Sen. Markey: And without this funding, grant recipients will now be forced to stop research to address the mental health crisis of alzheimer's disease. People have committed their lives to these efforts and will lose their jobs. I submit these letters to the record, Mr. chairman.
▶ 2:11:28Chair Cassidy: Without objection.
▶ 2:11:30Sen. Markey: In your testimony, you stated you want to encourage free speech and dissent among scientists. Will you commit here today to object to any decision made by donald trump, elon musk, and robert f kennedy that was slow or stop lifesaving research?
▶ 2:11:52Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I am not involved nih in the decisions of the nih up to now -- I am not involved in the decisions of the nih up to now.
▶ 2:12:06Sen. Markey: Will you object if slows or stops to lifesaving research?
▶ 2:12:14Dr. Bhattacharya: My interactions with seetary kennedy and president trump to date suggest they do not want to slow research. They want to speed it up.
▶ 2:12:22Sen. Markey: Will you object if that becomes evident that there is slowing of the research?
▶ 2:12:28Dr. Bhattacharya: I have to say I don't believe they will ask me to do that.
▶ 2:12:32Sen. Markey: Will you commit here today to reinstating funding for scientists was funding has been terminated because their research does not align with maga ideology?
▶ 2:12:44Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I don't believe ideology ought to determine whether one gets research or not. I believe very fundamentally.
▶ 2:12:53Sen. Markey: Funding research on the mental health conditions of the lgbtq community, that should not be a basis for canceling funding for research? Is that what you are saying?
▶ 2:13:04Dr. Bhattacharya: If I'm confirmed, I absolutely will look at the letters submitted for the record so I can look but if confirmed, I will look carefully into that. I want to make sure the processes that the nih has.
▶ 2:13:18Sen. Markey: I appreciate that on its face it is absurd because they have mental health issues as well. Will you commit here today to do everything in your power to stand up for the american people and lifesaving biomedical research in the face of the trump attacks on scientific freedom?
▶ 2:13:35Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I absolutely commit to focusing and supporting the research that will advance the health of the american people. I don't agree with you, senator, that president trump as opposed to that. In fact, quite the opposite. He is quite in favor of making america healthy, and fundamentally the research that we do at the nih.
▶ 2:13:55Sen. Markey: I am told by the researchers in boston that they cannot even hire their new trainees because the trainees will not consider this a career because there will be no funding so it is the opposite. Trump is actually freezing, scary, frightening the whole next generation of scientists who believe the funding will not be there for them. That is the problem. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 2:14:18Chair Cassidy: Thank you. Just a follow-up and then a closing statement. Thank you for being here. Something I am trying to square. First, 1/5 of nih applications are funded and you said that for younger investigators, your plan on the face looks fantastic, so thank you for thinking creatively about that.
▶ 2:14:48Chair Cassidy: And you also I think correctly said we need to be putting more money into cutting-edge research, which may fail. It is cutting edge, but what is the alternative? So I am trying to square with that the extra dollars for validation with all of the caveats you put that would have to have the full cooperation of the person whose study is being validated and have to have the same circumstances and the same genetic makeup in the same this
▶ 2:15:19Chair Cassidy: And that and that and this, so it seems likely validation push would put more pressure on the cutting-edge research priority and the young investigators finding it easier to get money. Knowing you thought about that, how do you express this?
▶ 2:15:35Dr. Bhattacharya: Senator, I think that validation work essential to doing good science. Any portfolio that does not have that kind of validation built into it is not going to be reliable so even if you do cutting-edge research and it is not validated, you are not going to.
▶ 2:15:50Chair Cassidy: What is the difference between doing the validation research and kind of what you have criticized that we sometimes do the same thing over and over again?
▶ 2:15:59Dr. Bhattacharya: The difference is the validation focuses on particular results a scientist may have. If I published a study and you check the results and get the same result, mental science is you propose a study that is an epsilon away from what is already known and you do that.
▶ 2:16:17Chair Cassidy: Inherently if an epsilon away fails, it cost to question the original premise.
▶ 2:16:23Dr. Bhattacharya: But it is much more easy to be certain that research an epsilon away from the frontier is put to work versus big ideas in different directions that might make advances. Any research portfolio has to have lots of different approaches to this.
▶ 2:16:44Dr. Bhattacharya: I think the key to me and making sure if -- is making sure it really care researchers have ideas about hypotheses for instance with the example of alzheimer's we talked about, those get support that are in the portfolio. Some of those will fail and some of those will succeed and the ones that succeed will be big advances. I don't think the validation research -- validation is just a check.
▶ 2:17:11Dr. Bhattacharya: The research that I did, do you find the same thing? That tends to not get support in the scientific community. I think that is a mistake. The scientific community are to support that. Nih ought to support that. That way the research portfolio becomes more reliable because it is evaluated by multiple teams.
▶ 2:17:31Chair Cassidy: I don't object to the research. It seems like it will be a tension so I look forward to that.
▶ 2:17:37Dr. Bhattacharya: I look forward to working with you. The issue of autism is one of those things we all think about. Last year congress reauthorized the autism cares act and senator collins and the help committee did that and the law coordinates federal autism research and is implemented by nih. I look forward to working with you on that.
▶ 2:18:07Dr. Bhattacharya: One thing that continues to concern me as I have listened to this conversation, there is an opportunity cost. If we continue to plow the ground of something that has already been validated multiple times, that there is not a connection between vaccination and autism, we don't have the money to go after the real thing.
▶ 2:18:31Dr. Bhattacharya: You said something that I thought was so good, that you have faith that well done research that provides answers will be convincing to people. We have already had that for the vaccination. What we need is the well done research finding the true autism for -- the true reason for autism and that is what the hope is for people with autism. We are pissing away money over here, that is that much less money that we have to find the real reason.
▶ 2:19:04Dr. Bhattacharya: You are an economist. You know this. The opportunity cost of wasting money on one more thing that has been proven exhaustively, denying the opportunity to find the real reason would be a tragedy for everyone who has to deal with autism, which is all of us.
▶ 2:19:21Dr. Bhattacharya: I share the passion that you have her finding -- you have for finding the cause. That is where the vast majority of that should go. We want answers. Parents want answers. Kids are suffering. The nih should be doing the research to provide those answers. That is the most important thing.
▶ 2:19:43Chair Cassidy: Thank you again for being here. I admire your sons for being so well behaved. I am sure the presence of their mother right next to them had some influence over that. This concludes our hearing. For any senators who wish to ask additional questions, questions for the record will be due tomorrow at 5:00 p.m.